Stumbling Through the Dark
by Maxiekat
Summary: Clint hasn't been the same since everyone went their separate ways after the battle in New York. He keeps telling everyone he's fine, but Natasha doesn't believe her partner for one second. Turns out Fury is just as concerned and decides to send his two master assassins on what should be a simple assignment, but when has anything ever been simple?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Avengers, Stumbling Through the Dark _by The Jayhawks, and _Long Shadows_by Josh Ritter.

**Stumbling Through the Dark**

_I'm not afraid of the dark  
When the sun goes down  
And the dreams grow teeth  
And the beasts come out_

If there was a stereotypical New York City, rundown, creepy apartment building, she was standing in it. The halls were dark and dirty and smelled of piss, stale pot and other things she'd just rather not identify. If it wasn't for her years of training and the assortment of weapons she had stored under her civilian clothes, she might have felt a twinge of fear. As it was, she was wishing her job took her someplace halfway decent for a change, like a nice spa in the Caribbean or a chateau in the South of France – someplace far removed from reality.

Speaking of reality, Natasha had been staring at the scarred, battered door for a few minutes, unsure of what brought her there – her gut instinct or her nagging curiosity?

Something was wrong … something _felt _wrong.

She raised her fist prepared to knock, when the door pulled open a crack. "What do you want?" the husky voice on the other side asked.

She kept her voice steady. "You can put down the gun, Barton. It's me, Natasha."

"I knew that before I opened the door." His voice was flat, weary, and he didn't make a move to lower the pistol. She kept her hand firmly wrapped around the one in her jacket pocket, her finger on the trigger … just in case.

"Let me in." She tried to keep her tone light, like it was every day she showed up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, like she was there to ask for a cup a sugar, not to make sure he was still playing with a full deck and hadn't morphed into a Loki-fueled time bomb.

"Tell Fury I'm fine. Mission accomplished." He started to close the door but she quickly jammed her foot in the doorway.

"Fury didn't send me."

He snorted a laugh. "Bullshit."

"I'm here on my own." She inched her foot in further, wedging the door open. She could see inside – the TV was on, all the lights were off, but she could make out some things in the shadows - the hazy blue light from the television illuminating the liquor bottles littering the coffee table and dark lumps of junk scattered all over the floor and couch, making it look like her sometimes-partner had thrown a month long frat party. _What a shithole_, she thought with a grimace.

"If this is more _clean your ledger _crap, I'd rather just go back to bed," he said with a sigh as he took a step back. He waved his arm, gesturing for her to come in. The gun was still in his hand and he caught the glance she gave it. "Oh, right. Sorry," he said as he tucked into the back of his jeans.

Her hand brushed the light switch as she walked past it, flicking it on – she immediately wished she hadn't. She was right about the frat party – the place was a pigsty. Clothes, newspapers, magazines, books, beer bottles, liquor bottles, and roughly one takeout container for every Chinese restaurant in a ten mile radius of the place. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Home sweet home," he said dryly, pushing past her. He slumped onto the couch and picked up a beer bottle that was on the end table next to him and, glancing into it, he shrugged and took a sip of whatever was left at the bottom of it.

"Is S.H.I.E.L.D. not paying you enough?" she asked.

"What? Don't dig the digs?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"You know me, Tasha, like to keep it simple." She knew – she was the same way. But there was fine line between simple and decrepit. "Plus," he added between sips of old beer, "there's a great view from the roof."

"Of course," she said with small smile – at least some things hadn't changed.

Through with assessing the mess of an apartment, she finally gave herself a chance to assess the mess of a man. And he was mess – unshaven, bleary-eyed, he looked like he could sleep for a month.

Her heart twisted as she thought of the demons that must be plaguing him. She knew Loki had affected him, had hurt him far deeper than the shrinks at S.H.I.E.L.D. diagnosed. She knew, yet she let him ride off on his own after their mission was through, after the bad guy was captured and ordered restored. Forget about getting the red off her ledger, she wasn't even doing a good job at being a friend.

Suddenly, he hopped up from the couch, swaying slightly and she wondered just how much he'd had to drink that night – and the night before and the night before that. She wouldn't be surprised to find out the last few weeks had been one long binge.

"The roof," he announced. "Let me show you the roof."

"I don't think that's such a good idea."

"It'll clear my head. I think better up there. There's less …" he waved his hand around, "this."

XxXxXxXxXx

The apartment building was high enough that the light from the city below was diffused to a faint glow and you could actually see the stars in the sky. The moon was close to being full, maybe another couple of days, so it wasn't hard to make out her partner in the darkness. He'd perched himself on the ledge, looking out, looking down, his gaze never calm, never unaware of his surroundings.

Anyone else, she'd be nervous to see them so close to falling over the edge, but with Hawkeye, the edge was the one place he seemed to be most at ease. Of course, after who knows how much booze and how little sleep, even he could make a wrong move. _Or maybe it wouldn't be a wrong move _… she hated that the thought even crossed her mind.

He pulled out his gun, holding it in his hand like he was weighing it. Thinking. With a click, he ejected the clip and ran his thumb over the top bullet and slid the clip back into the hilt in one fluid motion. He returned it to the spot at the small of his back where he carried it, tucking it into the waistband of his jeans.

"What's with the gun?" She asked. He carried one as a sidearm, but it was still odd to see him with one on his downtime.

He shrugged, but didn't answer.

"Harder to shoot yourself with an arrow?" she asked.

"Don't know about that." He glanced at her and grinned. "Know plenty of guys with scars who would say otherwise."

"You know that's not what I meant."

"I'm not going to shoot myself." He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "So, what are you doing here, Tasha?"

She hopped up on the ledge next to him, trying to remain casual about the whole thing. "Just checking on my partner. You don't call, you don't write. I got worried."

"I'm fine."

"You keep saying that, but for some reason I don't believe you." She watched him out of the corner of her eye – he looked lost and alone. In their line of work, alone came with the territory, but this seemed to be more than just the "if only I was home more, I could get a cat or dog to keep me company" kind of alone. This kind of alone seemed to radiate from his soul. She fought the urge to reach out and touch his shoulder, give him a hug, something to tether him to the rest of the world. He wouldn't like that and she would just be awkward as hell at it anyway, so she settled for scooting a millimeter closer to him.

"Are you sleeping?" Natasha asked and Clint just wished she'd let the whole thing drop, but a tiny part of him was glad she was pushing him, glad she cared enough to pester the hell out of him in the middle of the night.

"Only when I pass out," he admitted with a small smile.

"Why?"

_Because when I close my eyes, you die,_ he wanted to say, but he didn't. The images flashed in his head – the red. Her hair, her lips, her blood. Closing his eyes didn't help, just made it worse. A week of those dreams convinced him to never sleep again.

He shrugged. "Bad dreams," was all he offered as he picked up a rock and fidgeted it with it, twirling it in his fingers.

"Loki?" Persistent as hell. He had to give her credit, no one else in his life would have ever cared enough to keep at it.

"Probably. I guess." He pitched the rock into the darkness, watching as it arched out toward the building on the other side of the street, hung for a second, and then plummet, giving into the inevitable.

"That wasn't you. You didn't do those things."

_Second verse, same as the first, _he tried not to laugh. "You know, I've told myself that so many times that it's like breathing, but doesn't make it true."

"Clint -" she started but he cut her off with a single, sharp word.

"Coulson."

She drew in a breath and when she spoke, her words were slow and deliberate, as if she had to pry them from her chest. "Loki killed him. You were nowhere near that room."

"Then why do I keep seeing it happen when I close my eyes?" _And why do you keep dying in my dreams?_

"Because you have a heart," she said sharply. Only Natasha would make an attempt at comfort sound like an argument. "Things matter to you. You're not some soulless robot who doesn't feel pain and guilt." She was looking at him, he could feel her eyes on him, but he kept his gaze on the skyline.

"Heart. I have heart." There was no humor in his laugh. "That's what Loki said, you know? Just before he touched my chest with that staff of his and stole my life."

"That's just an organ that pumps blood. Your heart is here," she touched his brow and then she placed her palm over center of his chest, her fingers warm in the chilled night air through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, "not here."

He looked over at her, their eyes met. Her hand didn't move and she just stared. He could hear her breathing. Hell, he was pretty sure he could hear her heart beating.

"I -" she started, blinking suddenly, looking to the right over her shoulder, breaking her gaze from his. She pulled her hand away like it had been scorched and he fought the urge to shake his head to clear it. _What the fuck had just happened?_

"Um …" he cleared his throat.

"Coffee," she said suddenly.

He waited a second, but she didn't elaborate.

She noticed his confusion. "We need coffee."

"It's 1 a.m."

"2 a.m. and it's not like you were going to sleep anytime soon."

He shrugged. "Fair enough." He hopped down from the ledge. "I'll go brew up a pot."

"No," she practically shouted as she followed him.

He turned and squinted at her. "Oddly enough, brewing a pot of coffee aids in the drinking of said coffee."

She gave him her best _get the fuck out of here _look that he knew so well. "There is no way in hell I'm drinking anything made in your kitchen. Have you looked around in there lately? It looks like you're breeding our next opponent – Mold Man or something."

Rolling his eyes, he said, "Fine, I admit it's a little messy."

"It's disgusting."

"Stop being such a girl."

She stopped in her tracks, crossing her arms over her chest. "I've shot men for less."

He threw up his hands in surrender. "Whatever. There's a diner around the corner. Open 24/7. Will that do?"

XxXxXxXxXx

The only other person in the diner at that time of night was a very tired waitress that Clint named Flo in his head even though her name tag said Amy. She seemed legitimately annoyed that Clint wanted a piece of pie with his coffee.

He took a bite and leaned back in the booth, propping his foot up on the seat next to Natasha. The coffee was chasing away the buzz from the beer and he was finally starting to feel a little clearheaded. He picked up his cup and downed the last of it. He glanced over at the waitress. She was leaning on the counter, reading a book. "Should I ask for another cup?" he asked Natasha.

"Um … sure," she said. "Why not?"

"I don't know, my gut tells me it could be a bad decision. Did you see how hard she dropped the plate onto the table?" He glanced back over at the counter and then leaned closer to his partner, whispering. "I think Flo over there could give Bruce a run for the money in the whole _Hulk Smash_ department."

Natasha sat back and laughed. "Now that's the smartass I know and lo- " She thought she'd caught herself in time, but apparently she hadn't.

Clint cupped his hand around his ear, "What was that, Nat, didn't catch that last part."

"Loathe," she said steadily, shifting in her seat. "Know and loathe."

"Right. Thought that's what you said." He gave a lopsided grin and tapped her hip with his boot. "For the record, I loathe you too."

He held up his cup and said, "waitress."

Maybe sleep deprivation was playing tricks on him, but he was pretty sure Flo actually growled at him. He carefully lowered his cup. "Uh … check please."

Natasha stood and grabbed her jacket off the hook next to their booth. As she was pulling it on, Clint quietly said, "thanks."

"I didn't offer to get the check." She tousled her red hair with her hands and shook her head.

He looked up at her, his gaze holding hers. "I didn't mean thanks for the coffee."

She didn't look away this time. "I know."


	2. Chapter 2

Note: I don't own _The Avengers _or _The Cave_ by Mumford and Sons.

**Chapter 2**

_refresh my broken mind_

"How is he, Agent Romanoff?"

"How is who, Sir?" she asked as she opened her refrigerator, hoping that the ingredients for a gourmet breakfast had somehow appeared overnight. The only thing that greeted her was the light bulb, but on the plus side, it was lit.

"Don't give me this 'how is who?' bullshit, Agent - you know precisely who I'm talking about."

She sighed and shifted her phone to her other ear as she started opening the cabinets. There had to be something vaguely resembling food in the apartment – after all she'd gone shopping … three months ago … for her apartment in London. She slammed the cabinet shut. "Agent Barton is just fine."

"For someone who has been trained in deception, you're not doing a very good job at lying right now."

"He needs time," she said, abandoning the thought of food. She couldn't lose Clint just as she'd gotten him back and if Fury doubted him at all, she'd be stuck breaking in a new partner and Clint would be left to vegetate on his shitty couch in his pit of an apartment. They didn't always work as a pair but when they did, they complemented one another so well that when one took a breath the other exhaled. She could never have that with someone as straight laced as Steve Rogers, or even worse, as egomaniacal as Tony Stark.

"Time is the one thing we don't have," Fury said, his tone dead serious. "The incident in New York is just the tip of the iceberg and we need to be prepared."

"When you need him, he'll be there, Sir. I trust him with my life and there aren't many people I'd say that about."

"Trust can be a dangerous thing; I don't need to tell you that."

She held her tongue – arguing with Nick Fury wouldn't get her anywhere and he also had the benefit of being right.

"I want to send you two on a simple mission. In and out, no muss no fuss. Think you can handle that?"

"Is this a test?"

"Of course it's a test, Agent Romanoff. And I hope for both your sakes that Agent Barton passes it."

XxXxXxXxXx

Clint opened the door on the third knock. He didn't look happy. She'd obviously just woken him up at the bright and early time of, she glanced at her watch and rolled her eyes, 10:45 am. She'd been to the gym, the firing range, and read the morning paper before he'd even realized the sun had come up.

"This is becoming a habit," he said with a yawn, rubbing his eyes and looking for all the world like he was going to lean against the door jamb and fall back asleep.

"Put a shirt on, Fury has a job for us."

He raised his eyebrows and looked down at his bare legs and boxers and said, "But pants are optional?"

XxXxXxXxXx

"Any other time you'd call with a new assignment," Clint called from his bedroom. He'd gone in there to get dressed and Natasha decided to be brave and take a look around his kitchen, hoping to find something salvageable for breakfast. She was surprised to find the fridge was well stocked and things were … well, not clean, but also not disgusting. Baby steps, she supposed.

"I was in the neighborhood," she answered back.

"You were checking up on me."

"I had no food in my apartment and I wanted breakfast." She turned the burner on, and not finding the skillet where she thought she would, she tried the stove was rewarded with every pot and pan Clint apparently owned.

"So you stopped by here, expecting to find something to eat?" She could easily picture the confused look on his face.

"Which I did," she pointed out as she cracked open some eggs into a bowl.

"By pure luck."

She rolled her eyes. "My plan was the diner around the corner. Trust me, I was completely surprised to find food when I opened the refrigerator."

Natasha had the eggs cooking and toast toasting by the time Clint emerged from his bedroom. She glanced over her shoulder – apparently he'd decided to go with jeans in addition to the faded black t-shirt he'd probably fished off the floor. She had to admit she missed the boxers.

"Thought you were scared of my kitchen?" he said as he walked up behind her and looked over her shoulder to see what she was making. She nudged her shoulder back, catching him in the chin. "Ouch," he cried, rubbing the spot she'd struck.

"Quit being a baby and grab some plates."

He reached above her and got out two plates from the cabinet. "So you didn't answer my question." He was so close to her, she could feel his voice rumble in his chest.

"You cleaned the place up a little bit," she said, trying to ignore the fact he smelled really good – like leather and soap.

"You noticed," he said with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Hard not to, Barton. You couldn't even tell where the sink was before."

"I'm a guy, Tasha. Guys are messy." He started clearing off the arrowheads and various tools that were scattered all over the battered card table that doubled as the kitchen table in a pinch. Most of his custom arrowheads were provided by the brainiac weapons engineers at S.H.I.E.L.D., but Clint also liked to experiment with some clever modifications of his own.

She turned with the skillet in hand, dishing out the scrambled eggs onto the plates. "Not all guys. And you can't tell me that was normal for you."

"What can I say? You opened my eyes. Showed me the error of my ways." He grabbed the ketchup, hot sauce, two bottles of beer and a bottle of water from the fridge and sat down in a folding chair.

"You were in a world class wallow, Clint - the wave of a magic wand doesn't fix it overnight." She sat down opposite him and he looked up from his plate and she saw the truth in the red rimming his eyes, the dark circles shadowing his gaze betrayed him. He cleaned up good, put on a convincing disguise as "Normal Guy", but nothing had changed.

Worry knotted her stomach – they'd both been through so much, bounced back from some of the worst scenarios the human, and sometimes not-so-human, mind could come up with. Was there actually a breaking point for him? And if there was one for him, what did that mean for her? Somehow her partner's vulnerability felt like a giant bullseye painted on her own back and she didn't like it.

He was dousing his eggs with hot sauce and then offered her the bottle. She made a face and shook her head. He then offered her the extra beer and she glared at him, so he nudged the water across the table. "So what's our new mission?" he asked, piling the mess he'd made of the eggs onto his fork.

"It's your basic rescue mission." She reached down behind her chair and pulled out the file she'd brought with her in her bag. Clint took it from her and laid it on the table without opening it, waiting for Natasha to give him the basic facts of the assignment before he got mired in the finer details laid out in the report. "A girl got kidnapped," Natasha continued. "She's being held for ransom. Her father wants to avoid getting the government involved. S.H.I.E.L.D. apparently owes him a favor and he's cashing it in."

"What's the catch?" he asked.

"Catch?"

"Like you said – it's your basic rescue mission. So why us?"

_Because Fury needs to make sure you're still a viable agent and not someone who needs to be cut loose,_ she thought. _And I can't let that happen. _Natasha couldn't say that though and settled for a simple, "Why not?"

He narrowed his eyes at her as he slowly took a sip of beer, studying her, trying to see if there was a crack in her carefully controlled armor. She suddenly felt very exposed and shifted slightly in her chair, immediately cursing herself for that tiny misstep. As spies, they were trained to look for changes in body language, "tells" that gave away what a person was really thinking. _Not Fidgeting In Your Chair _was Beginner Spy 101. "Seems fishy to me," Clint said steadily, staring at her and she knew he'd caught her mistake. _Amateur,_she silently scolded herself.

"Your Spidey-sense tingling?" she forced a smirk, trying to deflect his attention and he laughed like she knew he would.

"Nah, just good old fashioned gut instinct. Don't need any radioactive spiders or blasts of gamma radiation to know that something's not quite right." He pointed his fork at her. "You're in on it."

She rolled her eyes. "Loki made you paranoid." She regretted it the second it was out of her mouth.

His shoulders stiffened and the humor left his eyes, hardening them, reminding her of the distant stare they had when he was under Loki's control.

Dropping her fork, she reached across the table for his hand, but he pulled it away from her. "Clint, I'm …"

"Sorry," he finished for her. "Every person I know is sorry – Steve is sorry, Agent Hill is sorry, Tony's … well, Tony's not sorry, but the rest of them are. And sorry for what? They didn't fucking cause all this." He took a swig of beer, downing half the bottle in one go. He slammed it on the table, making her wince. "You know what I'm sorry about? I'm sorry I didn't put a fucking arrow in the guy's brain when I had a chance. I'm sorry that all I could do was stand there and let him wipe out a room of soldiers, men I knew by name, men I worked with, passed in the hall every day."

He was looking down at the table, running his hand back and forth over the edge, worrying a tear in the brown pleather that covered the table. "And then he went and turned me into the goddamn weapon. There aren't enough 'sorrys' in the world to ever make up for that." He looked up, his eyes glassy, his breathing ragged.

"Clint, we'll get past all this. A new mission will help. Take your mind off it."

He took a deep breath and when he met her eyes again, the anguish was gone, almost like it hadn't been there in the first place. She thought of Bruce and how he could be himself one minute and then someone entirely different the next. It was like Clint was waging a battle within himself. If he didn't deal with what was eating him up inside, it was going to consume him.

She felt so unarmed sitting there and watching it happen. Platitudes and cheesy self help slogans didn't fix anything. _Chin up, Barton. After all, tomorrow is another day and once you see the good within yourself, you'll be able to embrace the future and start fresh_. Or some bullshit like that.

This was so far out of her realm of expertise – putting a bullet in a guy's brain was far different from trying to piece one back together again.

"We'll figure it out," she said carefully.

"Dr. Romanoff, shrink by day, Avenger by night?" he said and she quirked a smile.

"Something like that."

"You're definitely cuter than the guy S.H.I.E.L.D. has me talking to."

"Weiser?"

"Yeah, that's the guy," he said as he leaned back in his chair. He held up his hand, slightly higher than his shoulder. "Yay high, balding, nasal voice. About as calming as a nest of vipers."

She nodded and leaned forward in her chair. "After Budapest – good six weeks worth of sessions with the guy." She shook her head. "All I needed was a solid hour at the firing range and maybe a nap."

Clint laughed. "Like I told you, you and I remember Budapest very differently."

He pushed his plate away and stretched in his chair, rolling his neck to work out the kinks. "So what scenic hell hole is Fury sending us to this time?"

She leaned back and crossed her arms. "Brazil."

He raised an eyebrow. "For real?"

She nodded.

"But … São Paulo…" his voice trailed off.

_Maybe Fury's testing us both_, she thought, the pieces clicking into place.

"Hey, don't think about it. Think about …" he sat forward, waving his hand in the air, like he was trying to conjure a thought.

"What?"

"Sun, beaches, babes in bikinis." He gave her his best shit-eating grin.

She rolled her eyes. "And a kidnapped girl. Bad guys to kill. A job to do."

"Danger around every corner. Yeah, yeah I know the drill. But …"

She narrowed her eyes, daring him to continue.

"Have you seen those bikinis?"

* * *

_O_

_O_

_O_

_O_

_A/N - As you can see, I broke down and decided to make this longer story. Not sure how long it will be and how often I will update it, but I will do my best. Thank you so much to everyone for the wonderful reviews and for all the favorites and alerts - it means a lot to be welcomed like that into a fandom I never imagined myself writing for._


	3. Chapter 3

Note: I don't own _The Avengers,_ Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 60, or _Don't Think Twice, It's Alright_ by Bob Dylan

**Chapter 3**

_It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe  
It don't matter, anyhow_

Ilhabela. He wasn't quite sure how to pronounce it, but one thing was certain – it sure beat the hell out of his apartment back in New York. If it wasn't for the small armory hidden in their luggage back in the hotel room, he could fool himself into thinking it was a vacation they were on, not a mission.

Off the coast of Brazil's mainland, the island wasn't huge – just a little over 100 square miles, but it had a thick, dense rain forest that was going to be a bitch to hike through to find their target – a fact he'd worry about in the morning. For the moment, he was going to focus on the beach and the ocean and shut out the rest of the world. The waves were gently lapping against the shore, the water was so blue it looked fake – like an artist had gone a little overboard with his paint and sacrificed realism for beauty. Clint just stared out, the stillness of it all washing over him.

"If I didn't know you better," a voice said from behind him, "I'd say you were out here writing sonnets to the sunset or some other romantic nonsense like that." Natasha took a seat next to him on the sand, her attention on the sun slowly fading, leaving vivid stripes of color across the sky.

He bumped her shoulder with his and grinned. "Who's to say I'm not?"

She tilted her head toward the fading, golden light, an exaggerated dreamy look on her face. "_Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore …_" she quoted.

He raised an eyebrow. "Forsooth I swear?"

"Shocked I know a little Shakespeare?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of _There once was a man from Nantucket …_"

"That's because you're five and still laugh at fart jokes."

He leaned back on his elbows and sighed. "You need to broaden your horizons, Agent Romanoff."

She leaned back as well, mimicking his pose. "And you, Agent Barton, need to take a quick nap because tonight, you're taking me out dancing."

"Dancing? Is that part of the mission?"

She shrugged. "First night in paradise. We're not sitting in the hotel room and watching HBO. Consider it part of our cover, honey."

"Oh right, that." They were a married couple on their first real vacation away from their kid since getting married six years ago. Clint was a little surprised when Natasha suggested it, but he realized that, like him, she found the assignment a little pedestrian and sometimes they liked to spice up the easier missions with covers that could maybe prove to be more challenging, acting wise. Not that it was hard to act like a couple with Natasha – it was a cover they often used. It was the married with a kid part that freaked him out a bit. He didn't know the first thing about being domestic – his brief fling with actually having a family ended abruptly when he was just a little kid and it wasn't like his drunk of a father was any great example of how to act around a wife.

She was right about the nap, though - between the flight down there and the ferry out to the island, he was beat and more than ready to lean back onto the sand and sleep for a month. His body needed it – hell, his mind needed it. He couldn't imagine that the nightmares would find a foothold in a place like this, but the little voice in his head, the one reminding him not to get too comfortable, that they had a job to do, also found it necessary to point out that he was more than likely full of shit. Loki and his blood soaked dreams were just as at home on the beaches of Brazil as they were on the streets of New York.

He stretched out, laying back completely, not caring that he was going to be covered in sand. Closing his eyes, he crossed his arms behind his head and yawned. "Wake me in year, Nat."

He didn't have to look to know she rolled her eyes at him, but he peeked anyway and grinned. It was one of his life's many missions to annoy her at least once every hour or so. She liked to put up a front of being calm, cool, collected and badass, but he knew she had a dozen different sighs when she was annoyed and that the corner of her mouth quirked up when she was trying not to laugh and that when she arched an eyebrow, you better have on your best Kevlar vest because the words she was about to throw at you could do more damage than a perfectly aimed arrow.

"Twenty minutes," she said.

"An hour," he countered.

"Thirty minutes."

_Shit,_ he thought, _that barely counted as a compromise._

"Fifty-nine minutes."

"Thirty-one minutes and not a second more. I have a gun and I know how to use it." She stood up and brushed the sand off her hands … onto his face.

He turned his head quickly, trying to keep the sand from getting in his eyes. "Fine. I give. You win. Forty-five minutes." He heard the unmistakable sound of a round being chambered in a semi-automatic pistol. "Of course, by forty-five minutes, I meant thirty-one," he quickly amended.

"That's what I thought you meant."

XxXxXxXxXx

"Tasha," Clint yelled, hoping to be heard over the hairdryer going at full blast in the bathroom.

"Yeah?" Natasha stuck her head out the bathroom door, her dripping hair hanging in her eyes.

He held up the shirt that she'd left lying on the bed for him. "What is this?"

"Your shirt for tonight."

"But …" he started, holding the offending article of clothing at arm's length like it was a bomb about to go off.

She stuck her head out again. "Disguises. Our cover."

He mentally added the "Duh" for her. "Disguises I get. But am I also supposed to be colorblind?"

"It's fine."

"It's ugly."

"It's what a middle-aged guy wears on vacation," she said as she closed the door.

"Not this middle-aged guy. And who said I was middle-aged?"

"Your file," she hollered above the hairdryer.

He knocked on the bathroom door and she opened it. He caught a glimpse of the white towel she had wrapped around herself but he didn't let it distract him. "You read my file?"

She gave him a pointed look. "Like you didn't read mine?"

"That was different."

Tilting her head, she asked, "How?"

"You were a target. I was sent to kill you," he reminded her.

"Well, I had to see if I could trust someone who would disobey their orders." She started to shut the door, but he blocked her.

"You wouldn't be here if I didn't disobey them."

She made a tsking sound and touched her finger to her chin, like she was solving a puzzle. "It is a bit of a conundrum isn't it?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "You're just trying to distract me from the shirt."

"Did it work?"

XxXxXxXxXx

"So the middle-aged husband wears a bright orange Hawaiian shirt with hula girls and Mai Tais all over it? What does the middle-aged wife wear?" he asked several minutes later, wearing the shirt and a scowl.

"She wears whatever she wants to," was the answer. Natasha came out of the bathroom, hair pulled back, with soft curls framing her face, a mischievous grin on her full lips. She did a little twirl, the filmy skirt of her dress billowing out around her. It was white and strappy and he felt a wave heat rush through him at the sight. "Oh, and she's not middle-aged," she reminded him. "You married a hot young wife."

"That I did," he said, raising his eyebrows in appreciation. "You look bangin', Mrs. Brown."

She put her hand to her chest and batted her eyelashes at him. "Be still my heart," she said in her best Scarlett O'Hara accent. "Keeping it classy, Mr. Brown."

"Always."

She went to the dresser and picked up a necklace from the traveling case. He stepped up behind her before she even had a chance to ask and took the necklace from her hands. His fingers brushed against the back of her neck as he closed the clasp, catching a curl that was trapped under the gold chain, letting it slowly unfurl around his finger and fall to her shoulder. He fought the urge to trace the path of that curl and see if the skin of her shoulder was as soft as it looked.

Clearing his throat, he shook his head, hoping to knock some of the fog out of his brain. He never had trouble keeping things professional before … for the most part … usually. This assignment was no different and he could blame Loki six ways to Sunday for most of the shit that was going wrong with his life right now, but fantasizing about the back of his partner's neck wasn't something he could spin as being caused by a bad bout of mind control.

She turned around, completely unaware about the torrid affair they'd almost had in his suddenly over active imagination and she picked up the file she had placed on the desk before getting her shower. The file he should have finished reading on the flight down there but instead stared blankly at as the buzzing in his head grew louder, drowning out his thoughts and making concentration impossible.

"Let's go over this one more time."

He took a seat on the bed. "Sure thing."

"We're Chuck and Natalie Brown."

"Do I really look like a Chuck to you?"

She ignored him and continued on, hoping on one foot and then the other as she pulled on a pair of red high heels. "You are an accountant and I teach third grade."

"Here's hoping no one asks me to do their taxes while we mingle tonight." He leaned back on the bed and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. "This mission will be over before it starts."

"If you actually left your nest once in a while, you would know that in party atmospheres, no one ever asks an accountant about accounting things."

"Party atmospheres? Bit technical there, Natalie."

She gave him the finger and he forced himself not to grin in response. "We're from Delaware."

He held up his hand like he was answering a question in class. "That was the one thing I had a question about."

"The one thing?" she said dryly.

"Well, main thing." He sat back up. "Why Delaware? Who actually says they're from Delaware?"

"No one."

"Oh, and I guess that's the point?"

"Exactly."

"Okay," he said, "about our kid. He's five and his name is Buster and I suppose he's smarter than all the other kids in class and a world class athlete?"

She shook her head. "Sadly, no. His name is Henry and he takes after his father. No attention span, in trouble in school all the time, drools while staring at cartoons. Quite the handful."

"Seriously?"

She sighed. "No, not seriously. Henry is your average five year old. Nothing particularly special about him."

"Hey, that's our kid you're talking about."

She ignored him – something she excelled at. "He likes video games, doesn't do too badly in school. Keeps bugging us for a dog, but you're allergic and he had to settle for a goldfish."

"Making this all a bit complicated, don't you think?"

She stopped pacing and looked down at him. "I thought you liked it when we had some fun with this stuff?"

"The possibility of me answering questions about the tax code does not rank on my list of fun things to do. And you know, if had a dollar for every time I thought, 'gosh, what this mission needs is just a little more fun …'"

"See, now you're getting in the spirit."

He took his gun out of the nightstand and tucked it into the shoulder holster he had on under the orange monstrosity of a shirt. He hated leaving his bow, but a night out dancing didn't leave many opportunities for places to conceal a bow and quiver of arrows.

He ran his hands through his hair, feeling a rush of … something … frustration, maybe … rush over him. "What's really going on, Tasha?" he asked suddenly. "Dancing? Tacky shirts? Elaborate back stories? Those things don't gain intel and you know it. What happened to in and out in the quickest and easiest way possible?"

She shrugged and picked up her purse, checking the gun she had tucked inside. "Maybe I'm bored."

She snapped the purse closed and looked right at him, her big eyes wide and completely trustworthy. Her gaze was unwavering, but he could tell that her breathing had quickened a bit, that the gears in her brain were grinding away.

She was lying to him and he didn't like it.

XxXxXxXxXx

He picked up the Brazilian beat quickly – a little too quickly for Natasha's taste. "We're a married couple from Delaware, not contestants on _Dancing with the Stars_," she hissed in his ear.

"I don't know what the means, but you made me go out dancing," he spun her around effortlessly and caught her back in his arms right on the beat, "and I'm dancing."

"You're drawing attention to us," she scolded. They both had extensive training in etiquette and dancing and other forms of social interaction that could be required on any number of missions, so the fact Clint was a good dancer was not news to her, but the fact he chose this particular mission to display it for all the tourists gathered at the resort they were undercover at annoyed her to no end.

"This is about the shirt, isn't it?" she asked.

The corner of his mouth lifted as he shrugged. "Maybe."

"It was a joke," she admitted. "I'm sorry. Be thankful I didn't make you wear black socks and sandals."

"I don't know – now I'm disappointed that you didn't fully commit to your plan."

He dipped her suddenly and she had to grip his shoulders to keep from falling backwards. His face inches from hers, she could see the gold flecks that were scattered around the pupils of his eyes – not just a simple blue like she always thought.

Their breath mingled and she licked her lips as a flash went through her mind of him breaching those few centimeters that separated them and kissing her. He blinked, once, twice, like he was coming out of a trance and he shook his head, breaking their connection. "Um …" she said awkwardly as he helped her stand up. The song had ended and the dance floor was clearing off.

"It's getting late," he said gruffly and she nodded, still a little fuzzy after what had just happened.

"Wow, who knew an accountant had moves like that?" A guy stepped up, clapping loudly and Natasha forced a smile. His name was Steve and he'd shared a few drinks with them earlier that night. He'd clearly kept drinking long after they'd made an excuse to escape his company.

"Dance lessons," Clint answered. "You know how the old ball and chain can be."

Steve snorted a laugh, "Women." Natasha barely contained her look of disgust when he followed it with a belch.

Clint continued his improvisation, throwing his arm over her shoulder. "She insisted. Figured that if I ever wanted to get laid again, I better listen. Isn't that right, sweetheart?"

"Yes, honey." She ground her heel into the top of his foot … discreetly, of course. Clint didn't even blink.

"So how did that work out for ya?" Steve asked, swaying on his feet.

Clint tightened his grip on her shoulder and winked. "Let you know in the morning."

"You wish," she hissed under her breath.

Steve laughed. "Looking forward to a full recap."

She reached for her purse, but Clint reached across her and grabbed her arm, making a show of checking her watch. "Wow, is that the time?"

"Please let me shoot him," she whispered in her partner's ear. "Just a little."

Clint ignored her. "Guess we need to hit the sack. Lots of sightseeing to do tomorrow." He waved halfheartedly to Steve and started to steer her toward the hotel.

"Speaking of tomorrow," Steve called after them, "remind me to ask you about my taxes. There are some deductions I think my accountant missed. Could use a second opinion."

Clint groaned. "Fine, you can shoot him."


End file.
